What Do They Know?

A new crop of young people is trooping off to college, which means its time for the rest of us to feel old and useless and wallow in self-pity.

Helping us in that regard are some good folks in Wisconsin at Beloit College, who recently gave us an idea of what American popular culture does and doesn't mean to the average 18-year-old incoming freshman (freshperson?).

Young people born in the year 1981, for example, have probably never dialed a telephone.

PCs, NutraSweet and AIDS have been around their entire lives. (You are showing your age if you think these things are somehow interconnected.)

Three Mile Island, Jonestown and the Panama Canal Treaty all happened before they were born.

They recognize the moonwalk as a Michael Jackson dance step, not a Neil Armstrong "giant step."

Ketchup has always been a vegetable to them.

They have never seen white smoke over the Vatican and do not know its significance.

For all they know, "Squeaky" Fromme was a singer at Lillith Fair, not a Charles Manson disciple and attempted assassin of President Gerald Ford.

They do not remember Gerald Ford pardoning Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter lusting in his heart or that brief, chilling moment when Alexander Haig declared himself "in charge."

By the time they were born, punk rock was on its way out.

For them, there has always been a woman on the Supreme Court.

For them, John Belushi and John Lennon have always been dead.

Time began for them the year Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer got married.

They have always known strikes by highly paid athletes to be a routine part of professional athletics.

On the other hand, they have no recollection of President Carter's boycott of the 1980 Olympics.

The movies The Empire Strikes Back, The Shining, Alien and Apocalypse Now all came out before they were born.

The year after they were born, in 1982, the box-office smash was E.T. In 1953, the year after this old, tired columnist was born, the hit movie was Shane.

Some things haven't changed that much. The year the class of 2003 was born, reports condemned violence on television and in Hollywood films for producing the likes of John Hinckley. Today, reports condemn violence on television and in Hollywood films for producing the likes of Columbine.

As far as they know, Yugoslavia never existed. They have always been able to get their news from USA Today and CNN.

Of course, the class of 2003 is familiar with a lot of things that fuddy-duddies of my generation are not. In about 30 years, they can use this knowledge to write a similarly smug, sanctimonious column about the class of 2033.